


Old Friends

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, F/F, First Kiss, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 01:25:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10888917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: “I kissed a girl once.”





	Old Friends

She thought the last time she had seen Luna Lovegood had to have been before the war. They had graduated from high school in the spring of 1941 when the war had still been something happening far away in Europe, and she was pretty sure Luna had been with them when they had later driven to the lake with the car dad had been fixing for years and that had of course broken down in the way back. They had walked from there and Harry had been holding her hand in the dark and she had thought she would never be happier than right now.  
  
Luna had barely changed, even though it took her something like ten minutes to decide that the blond-haired woman in the corner table actually was Luna Lovegood and she wasn’t just imagining things because she was a bit lonely these days. She took orders from other customers and kept her back turned to Luna when she had to walk in that half of the diner, and when Helen took a huge cup of tea to Luna’s table, she leaned her palms onto the counter because Luna’s wide smile was still the same even though it shouldn’t have been possible after all that had happened.  
  
She took a cup of coffee and a sandwich to a man who said he was a poet but was actually selling toothbrushes or that was what the girls of the diner had told her. Then she checked from the slightly broken mirror beside the fridge that she looked like she always did, pushed her shoulders back, took a few deep breaths and walked over to Luna.  
  
“Hi,” she said.  
  
“Oh my God,” Luna said, “Ginny, what’re you doing here? I didn’t see you at all, I don’t know why, I guess I must have been thinking about something else. How are you?”  
  
“I’m working here,” she said although it probably was a bit obvious. “Nice to see you.”  
  
“You have to sit down,” Luna said and kept smiling at her, and it kind of hurt in the way it probably shouldn’t have. “I only came back a few days ago but I didn’t think anyone lived here anymore. I’m so happy that I found you. How’s Harry?”  
  
“Oh,” she said.  
  
“ _Oh?_ ” Luna said, looking immediately concerned. Ginny tried not to think about how she had once cried in the bathroom at the school for something she didn’t even remember anymore, and Luna had sat there on floor with her and kept telling her about the stars.  
  
“We broke up.”  
  
“I thought you got married,” Luna said, biting her lip.  
  
“We did.”  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” Luna said and then smiled again, “fine, sit down, can you? Or do you have to work? How many hours do you have? I’m just visiting dad for a week or so, then I have to go back to the city, but tonight we should go somewhere, I mean, what about the lake? Could we?”  
  
“Yeah,” she sighed and realized she had grabbed her apron and was holding quite tightly into it, “I have to work but the lake sounds fine. In the evening. But I don’t have a car.”  
  
“I can borrow dad’s car,” Luna said, “he doesn’t believe in them but his boss said it was important for a journalist to have one. I could wait here until your shift is finished.”  
  
“I still have four hours.”  
  
“Oh, it’s okay,” Luna said, “I have no rush. I think the gentleman on the corner is trying to catch your attention, though.”  
  
Ginny glanced over her shoulder. The man who sold toothbrushes seemed to want more coffee. “You don’t really have to wait for me.”  
  
“I know,” Luna said, “I’ll do it anyway.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
Later she changed her clothes in the tiny bathroom. There was a picture of Betty Grable taped onto the mirror. Ginny painted her lips with a color that didn’t seem to match Betty’s at all even though Betty was black and white. She pressed her fingers onto Betty’s mouth for a second but then again, she had no reason to care even if she looked a bit tired and not classy at all.  
  
When she came back, Luna had already picked up her notebook and pen and was now standing next to the table. Luna had cut her hair and it barely reached her shoulders. It was a bit wavy now that it was so short, and almost white as it always had been. Ginny ran a few fingers through her own hair and wondered if Luna’s felt soft or perhaps wiry.  
  
Luna’s father didn’t live far and so they didn’t take a bus but walked. It had been far too hot all week and Ginny had been trying not to remember all those things she always connected with these hot days, like climbing up the ladder to Harry’s bedroom, and the two of them just lying there on Harry’s bed because it was far too hot to do anything else, although of course she had known she wasn’t supposed to be there and that had probably been why it had been so thrilling. They had talked about their dreams. But that had of course been in later years when she had been fifteen or older and Harry had been at least sixteen and they had kind of reached an understanding that they liked each other.  
  
“What’re you thinking about?” Luna asked in a tone that suggested she actually wanted to know. Ginny had more than once thought Luna Lovegood was perhaps the only person in the whole world who never said anything she didn’t mean.  
  
“Nothing,” Ginny answered. They were almost at Luna’s father’s place. It was a very small town and perhaps that was why they had spent all their childhood together and why she had thought she had loved Harry.  
  
“Don’t you want to talk about it?”  
  
She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say and so she just sighed. “I don’t know. I was kind of thinking about Harry.”  
  
“You don’t have to tell me,” Luna said, “but you can if you want to.”  
  
“There’s nothing to tell.”  
  
“But he came back.”  
  
“Yes,” she said.  
  
“I heard the wedding was beautiful,” Luna said and it sounded like a question.  
  
“Yes,” she said, “it was. It was nice. I remember thinking _this is nice_ and _this is happening to someone else._ It was like I was watching it from outside and it was all fine but I just wasn’t there.”  
  
Luna smiled at her in a way that wasn’t sad nor happy. She took a deep breath.  
  
“Don’t ask me why I did it,” she said. “You know that we got engaged before he left. And when he came back, we were all so happy that he was alive. And he wanted to get married.”  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
“No, it’s not. I’m twenty-five and divorced and Harry kind of was my best friend, too.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Luna said and took her hand, and she thought about how her own palm was sweaty because it really was awfully hot in here this time of the year, but Luna didn’t seem to mind.  
  
“It’s been one and a half years,” Ginny said, “I’ve got used to it.”  
  
“That sounds like one day you’ll be happier than you’re now,” Luna said and squeezed her hand. “We’re here. I’ll just go inside and tell dad that we’re taking the car so he doesn’t think it went by itself.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’ll be right back,” Luna said and let go of her hand.  
  
“I know,” she said and then stood in the side of the road, watching as Luna walked up the stairs and went through the front door that seemed to be slowly falling down. She didn’t know if talking about Harry had made it feel worse or better but there was something inside her that wouldn’t settle even when she told herself that it was fine, it was all fine, that was how it was. She pressed her palm against the spot in her wrist where Luna had had her fingers, and then Luna came back through the door with the car keys.  
  
  
**  
  
  
She told Luna about her life when she asked but it didn’t take long because there really wasn’t much to tell. She tried to make it all sound at least a bit more exciting than it actually was but probably that didn’t work out since Luna was looking at her like she had known exactly what Ginny was trying to hide. Soon she gave up and asked Luna about her life and she meant _your life after the day we graduated and went to this lake_ and when Luna talked, she had hard time listening because she was thinking about how weird it was that some people understood what you meant even if you didn’t say it and some people never understood you no matter much you tried to tell them. But perhaps this was just her being a bit unfair to Harry. She knew well that Harry had did his best. She had often said that to Harry, including the last fight after which she had sat onto the porch of their now empty little house and folded her hands into her lap and felt hollow like something pretty essential had been carved out of her.  
  
_You have done nothing wrong_ , she had kept saying, or, _I know you’re doing your best. We just don’t fit. This isn’t working. We aren’t good together._ But later she had thought if she had told herself that so that she didn’t need to realize she wanted to wreck everything only because she was bored.  
  
“What’re you thinking about?” Luna asked.  
  
“Nothing. Sorry. What were you saying?”  
  
“That there could be millions of species that we don’t know about and that I think I would like to go looking for them. You were thinking about Harry.”  
  
“How can you tell?”  
  
“You look sad,” Luna said and bit at her lower lip. Ginny drew her glance away from her, through the window and into the scenery that had barely changed after 1941. The lake was pretty close to the town but it was muddy and steep and every ten years or so someone drowned in there and probably that was why people rarely came here. It was all a bit too yellow, yellow and orange and brown, she thought, like the world had tried so much to be green but there just wasn’t enough water.  
  
“I really tried,” she said. “I just couldn’t. I don’t know why.”  
  
“You couldn’t what.”  
  
“Any of it,” she said but probably she meant _I couldn’t love him._ “But I loved him. You know that. I loved him in a way. But something was missing. And by what everyone’s saying you’d think it’d be a bit easier.”  
  
“What would.”  
  
“Marrying someone,” she said, “being married, all that. You’d think all it takes is just to find a nice man. Like Harry. Someone who’s kind and who likes you. It looks so easy when other people do it.”  
  
“I think,” Luna said very slowly, “that’s because you don’t know what they’re thinking. You can see someone in their pretty house but you can’t see they’re really lonely in there, you only see their smile and the color of the curtains.”  
  
She had tried to buy curtains. She thought she had done it right: first she had talked about it with her mom and the girls in the diner and then with Harry who of course hadn’t been interested, and then one day she had taken a bus to the city to pick the fabric. And she had just stood there in the shop staring at all the colors and they had meant nothing to her and on the way back she had thought _I can’t do this._  
  
“Ginny,” Luna said, and she winced because Luna had placed her hand onto her knee and was rubbing the inner of her thigh just above the knee with her thumb like trying to caress her, maybe calm her down because surely Luna would see from her eyes that she hadn’t known how to choose the color, “I think what you’re doing is brave.”  
  
“What,” she said and laughed in a shaky tone.  
  
“Yeah.” Luna squeezed her knee lightly and then drew her hand away. “Let’s go swimming.”  
  
“I don’t have a swimming suit.”  
  
“Me neither,” Luna said, opened the side door and kicked off her shoes.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“I kissed a girl once.”  
  
Luna was sitting on the ground, leaning against her palms she had pressed onto the yellowing grass. She was now again wearing her skirt, her pale legs were sprawled onto the grass and she was wiggling her toes. She looked happy and like she hadn’t known Ginny was watching.  
  
“You did what?” she asked. Luna closed her eyes and smiled a little.  
  
“She was in one of my classes,” Luna said, “so one day we took lunch together and walked back to the campus and I kissed her.”  
  
“I don’t realize how –“  
  
“Just like that.”  
  
“Just like that.”  
  
“Yes.” Luna’s voice was soft and possibly that was because she thought she would have to be gentle with Ginny. Ginny swallowed and then sat down beside Luna, close enough but still so far that their arms weren’t touching. She thought absently that it was difficult to decide who had paler legs, only she had freckles and Luna hadn’t. Her heart was beating rapidly but probably that was the heat. “I touched her arm and she stopped. And then I had my palm on her cheek. I think she knew what I was going to do. And then I kissed her.”  
  
“Why’re you telling me this.”  
  
“No reason.” Luna turned to look at Ginny with slightly narrowed eyes. “Perhaps so that you know there’s more than one way to do it.”  
  
_To do what_ , she thought. Her skin was covered in sweat and she had just come out of water. “Okay.”  
  
“And I’m not saying you’d have to try,” Luna said, “of course I’m not. I don’t know if you want to. I just mean, if you want to, or whatever it is that you want to instead of being married to Harry or choosing curtains, you can. As long as you aren’t hurting anyone it’s okay.”  
  
“But what if,” she said and then realized she had no idea what she had been going to say. She knew there was a _what if._ She had known it the day she had cried in the porch and known it was over. But she had no clue what it was besides long days in the diner and a small town that was so familiar it seemed to be under her skin these days and she had to get out but she didn’t know where.  
  
“What if,” Luna said, “I showed you?”  
  
“Yeah,” she said. She couldn’t see Luna’s eyes because there was a steep shadow on her face. It was a bright day and the lake was dead quiet as always.  
  
“I don’t mean it has to be what you are,” Luna said, not moving, “or your thing, not at all, you can be anything you like. Anything you are. But I just think, what if we tried, just to see if you like it –“  
  
“Show me,” she said.  
  
It was a lot like kissing Harry, only it seemed slower and somehow softer but that was how Luna had always done things. She kept her eyes closed and the smell of Luna’s skin and hair was so familiar for a few seconds it seemed impossible that they hadn’t done this before, but of course that was because they were old friends. She placed her fingers onto Luna’s shoulders and then onto her neck and her skin was a bit sticky again and very warm, and her fingers were again on Ginny’s thigh and her thumb was drawing slow circles there and Ginny thought something was clenching in her but probably it was good. She said that to Luna and Luna laughed almost silently onto her mouth and then kissed her lower lip very slowly like there hadn’t been a place in the whole world where they had needed to hurry to.  
  
“I had a crush on you in high school,” Luna said and kept kissing her, “I think, I only later realized I could call it that.”  
  
“That’s –,“ she said but she had somehow tucked her fingers into Luna’s hair and was following the line of her jaw with her thumbs and also she was a bit out of breath.  
  
“I mean,” Luna said, “I sometimes kind of thought, _what if I kissed her now._ ”  
  
“You could have -,” she said, “- asked.”  
  
“I didn’t dare,” Luna said, “but I did now. Do you see? In some things it’s better to be twenty-five than sixteen.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“You said you had a crush on me.”  
  
Luna glanced at her and smiled but looked slightly nervous. Ginny leant into the side door of Luna’s dad’s car and pushed her feet against the sand and small rocks and yellowing grass. It was probably a bit weird that Luna was nervous because Luna was never nervous, but the still air around them was too hot and her bones felt heavy and she was slightly dizzy from the kiss so it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t take that thought any further.  
  
“I didn’t know,” she said when Luna kept quiet.  
  
“I didn’t either,” Luna said. “I think it’s about naming this.”  
  
“But it’s not only that,” she said, “naming things, is it?”  
  
“Of course it isn’t.”  
  
“Because however much I tried to call it love I still couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t fit, the name, what I wanted to call it just didn’t fit.”  
  
“I just really want to,” Luna said and took a deep breath, and Ginny could see her chest raising, “to live the best way I can. I want to do good things. And I want to be happy. I really want to be happy and I want to do it on my own terms.”  
  
“Like in your own house and –“  
  
“No,” Luna said. “That’s not my terms. That’s what I see in magazines. I don’t want to read about what I want in life, I want to figure it out myself and then be honest about it. I really liked kissing you.”  
  
“I –“  
  
“It’s okay if you didn’t,” Luna said, “of course it is.”  
  
“Can we do it again?”  
  
Luna blinked and looked at her. It was slowly getting dark and she knew they would have to leave in some point, because of course they would go back to the town and everything would go back to normal. But she had something under her skin, like a thought that they had still time. And as Luna watched her and slowly opened her mouth, there was a long silence between her every heartbeat. “You want to do it again,” Luna said.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
This time, she thought, she knew a bit better what she wanted to do and Luna was even slower and gentler and also kept smiling against her mouth. She pressed her palms onto Luna’s neck and Luna’s hair got stuck onto them. It felt a little wiry. She had of course thought about kissing when she had been younger but she had always imagined kissing Harry, and then later she had done it over and over again until it had become something to do when she couldn’t bother using words. And it wasn’t like it was completely different with Luna, it really wasn’t, but she felt soft inside and that had to be because she couldn’t believe this was happening and his skin felt nervous every time Luna happened to touch it and she realized she was kissing Luna more firmly and tried to back away because what if that was too much, what if Luna only wanted it very soft, but then again Luna had her palm on Ginny’s neck and she was saying something Ginny couldn’t make sense of.  
  
“What?”  
  
“What if,” Luna said, “I mean, can I touch you? Do you want to?”  
  
“Can you what?”  
  
“Can I,” Luna said and placed her thumb onto the inner of Ginny’s thigh, so light she barely felt it, “this.”  
  
“I don’t get it.”  
  
She could feel Luna freeze so that had to have been the wrong answer, but when she tried to back away Luna tucked her fingers into her hair and drew low circles. “You don’t get it,” Luna said very slowly.  
  
“No.”  
  
“I mean,” Luna said and frowned, “I can touch you. Between your legs. If you want to.”  
  
“Between –“  
  
“You haven’t done it.”  
  
“I have -,” she said and bit at her lower lip. Luna’s hand on her thigh was so still it felt like everything else had gone silent too. “I _have._ With Harry.”  
  
“You’ve slept with Harry,” Luna said.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I figured. But have you,” Luna swallowed, “do you touch yourself? Down there? Or… did Harry?”  
  
“No,” she said and leant back so that she could see Luna’s face, “I don’t –“  
   
“Listen,” Luna said and ran her fingers through her hair, “I’ll do it. And if you want me to stop, you have to tell me.”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
Luna leant in to kiss her and then pulled her hands away. She watched as Luna inched further away from her, pushed her feet against the ground and set the tail of her skirt onto her thighs in a gesture that looked very careful even though her hands were shaking a little. And then she widened her knees, placed her hand under the tail of the skirt and turned her head to look at Ginny.  
  
“I’ll just,” Luna said and swallowed, “very gently at first, you have to be gentle because it’s… it took me a long time to figure out how…”  
  
“What’re you doing?”  
  
Luna opened her mouth slightly but kept watching her. She licked her lips and then moved and the rasp of the sand felt so loud she startled. It was all quiet besides Luna’s breathing that was slowly growing heavier. And the tail of the skirt with blue flowers on it was sliding down Luna’s thighs and Ginny could see how Luna was wiggling her toes now and when she raised her eyes Luna was still staring at her, only now slightly unfocused, and there was sweat on her forehead and she was leaning the back of her head into the light green metal of the car and her hair was messy and it only got messier because she was moving her head slightly from side to side like she couldn’t have kept it in place.  
  
“It takes a while,” Luna said, out of breath.  
  
“I didn’t think –“  
  
“I’ve never done this so that someone’s looking,” Luna said, “it’s weird, it’s like… like you could see through me. And it’s good. I like that you can see… through me.”  
  
“But I can’t.”  
  
“Yeah,” Luna said and laughed and then took a sharp breath and another, “could you… do you want to… you could maybe hold my head. If you want to.”  
  
“Like this?” she asked and placed her fingers into Luna’s neck.  
  
“Yeah. _Yeah._ ”  
  
“What else?”  
  
“Nothing. This is good. I like you, Ginny, I always liked you.”  
  
“I like you too.”  
  
“Yeah,” Luna said and closed her eyes, “but… I mean… I like you like… like _this…_ ”  
  
She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say, and anyway Luna was leaning her head into Ginny’s hand now and taking hasty breaths, and she watched as Luna bit at her lower lip and froze, and Luna’s knees slowly fell down onto the ground and her skirt with blue flowers lay in her lap and she pulled her hand back and let it rest against the ground, and Ginny realized she was staring at Luna’s hand but somehow she thought that was fine. And then Luna took a deep breath and reached to run her front finger on the back of Ginny’s palm.  
  
“So,” Luna said.  
  
“So,” she said and turned her palm upwards so that Luna’s fingers settled in between of her own. “That feels good.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I didn’t know.”  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
“Can you do it?”  
  
Luna watched her. “You want me to –“  
  
“I don’t know how to do it.”  
  
“It’s not,” Luna said and straightened her back, “a magic trick, or… there’s no one way to do it, I think. And I don’t know how you like it until we… try. But I’d like to. If you want.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You want me to.”  
  
“Yeah,” she said and of course she knew Luna could hear from her voice how nervous she was. “Can I just sit here?”  
  
“Yeah,” Luna said and placed a hand onto her knee, “however you like.”  
  
“Good,” she said and tried to do the same Luna had before, leaning into the side of the car with her feet pushed against the sand, knees apart, and Luna watched her with her mouth half-open and then very slowly reached to kiss her right knee.  
  
“You sure?”  
  
She nodded even though of course she wasn’t and surely Luna could see it. Luna kissed her knee again and then came closer to her so that she could smell the sweat on her skin, and Luna had her right hand on her knee and the left on her hair and she leant into Luna’s hand and watched as the other hand disappeared under her skirt. And then Luna’s fingers ran over the fabric of her underwear and she closed her eyes.  
  
The lake was all quiet. She could feel the small rocks in between her toes and then the grass that was dry and she thought this had never been meant to happen. She hadn’t been looking for it. She hadn’t known it was possible. She hadn’t known she could lean into a car at the lake and that her skin could be covered in sweat and she could feel her own heartbeats growing bolder in her chest and Luna’s fingers carefully tucking her underwear aside just a little. Luna kept asking how it felt but she couldn’t say, and she kept breathing in and out and it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t exactly good either, it felt like the closest she had ever been to another human being and in some point of it she thought hazily _she can see me_ and smiled and Luna leant in to kiss her on her cheek. And yes, there was something, she had to push her feet against the grass, and then it slowly faded away, and came back a little and faded again, and she thought about the nights she had spent in the narrow creaky bed with Harry, the loneliest nights, and Luna’s fingers ran on her neck and drew small circles on her shoulder.  
  
“I’m going to stop now,” Luna said when Ginny was thinking that she was somehow very tired and that it was still warm enough to stay outside and probably would be for the whole night, they could just fall asleep here.  
  
“Can you kiss me,” she said when Luna pulled her hand away.  
  
“Yes,” Luna said and leant closer.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“What do you think will happen?”  
  
“What?” Luna said and turned her head to the side to look at her. It was almost dark now and there was a light breeze of wind and her toes were cold already but she couldn’t make herself move.  
  
“I mean,” she said but didn’t know how to end that sentence.  
  
“You mean,” Luna said slowly, “what happens now that we’ve kissed.”  
  
“I suppose.”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“I think I have a crush on you, too.”  
  
Luna gave out a quiet laugh and leaned into her shoulder. “That’s good.”  
  
“I could come to the city when I have a day off.”  
  
“You would come to see me?”  
  
“Yeah,” she said. She thought Luna looked a bit surprised but really it was a bit too dark to tell. “If you want me to.”  
  
“I want you to.”  
  
“Good. I can come there and we can… perhaps take a walk.”  
  
“A walk,” Luna said and grinned slowly. “Yeah.”  
  
“I think,” Ginny said, her heart beating faster, “I might sleep over your place. If that’s possible.”  
  
“I have a landlady,” Luna said and placed her hand over Ginny’s, “but I think I could talk her over. I mean, I can tell her that there’s this old friend visiting me.”  
  
“Do you have… where would I sleep?”  
  
“Anywhere you want,” Luna said and squeezed her fingers.  
  
  
**  
  
  
She thought she could see Luna watching her over her shoulder as she drove away with her dad’s green car but of course she couldn’t be sure. It was too dark. She stood on the pavement and watched the car slowly disappear under the dim orange light of streetlamps. She knew very well Luna’s dad lived only a few blocks away and that was where Luna was going and not further away, not tonight at least, but still she had to take a few deep breaths before the weight in her chest eased. The main street was all quiet, everyone was sleeping, and it seemed exactly the place where something special might be lost.  
  
When she closed the door of the flat she was now renting, she waited for something to be different but it wasn’t. Everything was where she had left it. She stopped in front of the mirror she had placed behind the door so that she wouldn’t have to see herself all the time. She looked exactly like she always did, only there was this stubborn hint of a smile in the corner of her mouth that wouldn’t go away no matter how serious she tried to look. She leant closer to the mirror. Almost nothing had changed, she thought, _almost nothing,_ which if she considered it optimistically was pretty close to _everything._

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story about these two girls in English (finally!), probably not the last. If you want to, you can say hi on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com) :)


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